Jaded, I pick it up. Pips. Someone calling from a phone box. ‘Hey, Mick! It’s Lars!’ A pause while I mentally shuffle through the deck for a face to go with the name. ‘…from Metallica!’ Oh…yeah, Lars. How did he get my number? ‘Hey, Lars. How ya doing?’ ‘Yeah, great…’ There follows the usual lengthy exposition in which I get to hear just how great he and his band are doing. There are shows that have been ‘awesome’. There are people that have been ‘fucking assholes’ or, more often, ‘great fucking guys’. There are beers that have been drunk and furniture that’s fallen over and been flung out the window, laughs everywhere, the party never-ending, inescapable. In the background as he rants in his mangled Danish-American accent, the unmistakable sound of a pub in full swing. And then he gets to the point. ‘Listen, I was thinking, I don’t have anywhere to stay tonight…’ This, I know, is a lie, or an untruth. Everybody knows that whenever Lars is in London these days he stays at his new manager’s posh house.
